Optical illusions using glass and water have always been popular with photography. Whether it’s reflections of objects on top of each other or the world seen through a water droplet, it’s a fascinating subject. So, it’s no wonder that so many photographers want to give it a try.

One such photographer is Brazilian born Alexandre Watanabe, also known as EvilWata Imagery. In a pair of images recently posted to Facebook, we see the technique performed beautifully. The images are titled Complementary Refraction, and it really shows off just how effective it can be. We got in touch with Alexandre to get some insight into the process.

Astrophotography is one of those genres I love to admire from a distance. I’ve tried it occasionally and failed miserably every time. I’m sure most of it is down to my technique, although I’m going to blame clouds and light pollution anyway. I’d love to be good at it, but it’s just not going to happen.

So, when I see work from people like Russian landscape photographer, Daniel Kordan, I am both amazed and impressed. During a recent visit to Sala de Uyuni in Bolivia, Daniel managed to capture something incredible. The Milky Way reflecting off the surface of the flooded salt flats.

It helps us to learn and develop as photographers, broadening our experiences and gives us valuable information that we can take back and attempt to apply to the subjects we normally photograph, to try to push ourselves and our imagery just that bit further.

A team of researchers from MIT (Tianfan Xue, Michael Rubinstein, Ce Liu and William T. Freeman) are teaming up with Google with to present a new algorithm that is able to extract photographic inconveniences such as glares and reflections from photographs. The algorithm can then reproduce the image free of any reflections, in addition to being able to create an additional image of the reflection itself. This kind of problem solving would be especially useful when shooting behind glass or a fence, for example. [Read more…]

Windows have been ruining photos ever since the first time a photographer tried shooting through one.

Unless you bring along dedicated contraptions or start messing around with cloths and funny angles, shooting through the glass will likely lead to an annoying reflection that will make you want to smash it to pieces. (If you’re actually trying to get a reflection then scratch everything I said; windows are awesome).

This problem might soon come to an end, though; as researchers say they’ve developed an algorithm that can automatically remove reflections from digital photos. The algorithm can’t remove all types of reflections, but it does an impressive job with the ones it can remove.

Last year I made an article about getting good gradient reflections on surfaces, but after a while of using this that I’ve come to realize that I actually get slightly better (and easier) results with a different technique.

You can consider this as he second part of the How To Get Gradient Reflection On Surfaces tutorial.

Getting gradual reflection on a shiny surface is not trivial. It is not hard, but you have to know how it is done (which you will once you’ve read this post :). This is one of my favorite techniques when shooting products with a granite tile, and it gets that gradient reflection on a reflective surface every time.

I got a couple of messages on Flickr a while back asking me how to get a gradient effect on an iphone shot I did before. So here is a step by step lighting tutorial on how to achieve this kind of lighting and where you can use it.

John Aldred is a portrait and animal photographer in Lancaster, England. you can see some of his work on his website, or find him on Facebook or Twitter.

Stefan Kohler is a conceptual photographer, specialized in mixing science, technology and photography. He is one of the founders of Kamerakind, based in Traunstein, Southern Germany. You can follow him on Facebook or on 500px.com

Liron Samuels is a wildlife and commercial photographer based in Israel.

When he isn't waking up at 4am to take photos of nature, he stays awake until 4am taking photos of the night skies or time lapses.